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Thermal Hydraulics in power Technology
Problem 1 (30%) – Hydraulic analysis of the PWR primary
system at cold zero-power conditions

A greatly-simplified schematic of the PWR primary system is

shown in Figure 1. The core and steam generators are represented
by two form losses of coefficients 7 and 4, respectively. The loop
can be modeled as a series of four identical round tubes of 1.45 m
ID and 10 m length. The flow within the loop is driven by a pump
that delivers a constant head, ΔPpump=200 kPa, regardless of the
flow.

Figure 1. Simplified schematic of the PWR

primary system
You are to evaluate the hydraulic behavior of the system at cold
zero-power conditions. In this situation the fluid can be considered
isothermal at 20°C and atmospheric pressure. The properties of
water at this temperature and pressure are reported in Table 1.

i) Calculate the steady-state mass flow rate in the system.

Clearly state all your assumptions. (10%)

ii) Now consider flow start-up from stagnant conditions. At t=0

the pump is turned on and the flow is established. Calculate the
time it takes for the mass flow rate to reach 50% of its steady-
state value. (15%) (Hint: use the following integral

iii) A nuclear engineer wishes to simulate the PWR primary

system by means of an experimental flow loop with the same
form coefficients and geometrically similar, but of 1/10 scale
(the pump head is also scaled down to 1/10). Would such loop
have the same time constant of the PWR primary system? (5%)

Assumptions:

- Neglect the acceleration and friction terms (Facc and Ffric,

respectively) in the momentum equation.

Table 1. Water properties at 20°C.

Problem 2 (25%) – Surface tension effects in borated water
draining from a BWR Standby Liquid Control Tank.

BWRs have a Standby Liquid Control Tank (SLCT) containing

highly-borated water at room temperature that can be injected
into the core, should the control rods fail to shutdown the reactor
during an accident. Over a long period of time, borated water
corrosion has created a small round hole of 0.5 mm diameter on
the bottom of the SLCT (Figure 2a). The contact angle between
borated water and the SLCT material is θ = 120°. The surface
tension of borated water at room temperature is 0.07 N/m, and
its density is about 1,000 kg/m3 . The initial liquid level in the
SLCT is 1 m.
i) Assuming that the SLCT top is open to the atmosphere,
would you expect the borated water to completely drain from
the hole? (10%)

If so, explain why.

If not, calculate the level at which draining would stop.

ii) Now assume that the contact angle is 60°. Does the tank drain
completely? Explain.
(5%)
iii) To prevent draining, a fellow MIT nuclear engineering student
suggests sealing the tank top and put a cover gas (Figure 2b).
Would this in fact prevent draining? Does the contact angle affect
your answer? (10%)

Problem 3 (25%) – Flow split between a heated and an

adiabatic channel.
Consider the two parallel channels shown in Figure 3. They are
connected only at the inlet and outlet plena, and both have flow
area A, equivalent diameter De and length L. Channel 1 is
heated ( is the total heat rate), while channel 2 is adiabatic.
Channel 1 has an orifice at the inlet (of form loss coefficient K).
The boundary conditions are as follows:

- The inlet plenum temperature is

To
-The total mass flow rate is mtot &
- The outlet plenum pressure is PL

The fluid specific heat and thermal expansion coefficient are cp

and β, respectively. The density of the fluid can be calculated by
means of the Boussinesq approximation with To and ρo as the
reference temperature and density, respectively.
 Figure 3. Parallel channels connected at plena.

i) Find an expression for the mass flow rate in channel 1 in

terms of the heat rate, geometry and properties only. (15%)
(Hint: assume steady-state upflow in both channels)
ii) Find an expression for at which the mass flow rate in channel
2 becomes zero. (5%) Q&
iii) What happens to the flow in channel 2, if the heat rate in
channel 1 is increased beyond the threshold calculated in
“ii”? (5%) (Note: provide only a qualitative answer)
 Assumptions:
- Heating in channel 1 is axially uniform.
- Assume single-phase flow in the system.
- Neglect acceleration and friction terms in both channels.
- All thermophysical properties (except density) can be
considered independent of
temperature.
Problem 4 (20%) – Quenching experiments to simulate
boiling heat transfer during a LB-LOCA.

To simulate boiling heat transfer on the surface of the fuel pins

during a Large-Break Loss Of Coolant Accident (LB-LOCA) in
a PWR, a nuclear engineer has designed a very simple quenching
experiment, in which a small copper sphere (∼1 cm diameter) is
heated up to very high temperatures (∼1,000°C), and then
dropped in a large pool of water at atmospheric pressure.

i) What are the differences between the experiment and the

actual reactor situation that are likely to have an effect on
boiling heat transfer? (5%)
ii) Write the energy conservation equation describing the
temperature history (T vs. t) of the copper sphere during a
quenching experiment? (5%) (Hint: neglect the temperature
gradient within the sphere, describe boiling heat transfer at the
surface of the sphere by
means of a heat transfer coefficient, and assume that the water
bulk is saturated)
iii) The boiling curve for the experimental conditions is shown
in Figure 4. Provide a
qualitative sketch of the sphere temperature history for an initial
temperature of 1,500°C. (10%)

Figure 4. Boiling curve for a sphere in saturated

water at 1 atm.
 Problem 1 (30%) – Hydraulic analysis of the PWR primary
system at cold zero-power conditions

i) The momentum equation for the loop

is:

where m is the mass flow rate, L=40 m is the total length of the
loop, A=1.65 m2 is the flow area, Kcore=7 and Ksg=4 are the
form loss coefficients for the core and steam generator,
respectively. The acceleration and friction terms were neglected
in Equation 1, as per the problem statement. Moreover the
gravity term is zero because the fluid is isothermal.

At steady-state and Equation 1 can be easily solved for the

steady-state mass
flow rate, mss:

ii) Equation 1 can be re-written as

follows:
Equation 3 can be integrated to find m(t) during start-up.
Separating the variables, making use of the hint in the problem
statement, and setting the initial condition m(0)=0, one gets:

where the time constant, τ, is defined as follows:

Equation 4 is plotted in Figure 1. The time it takes to reach 50% of

the steady-state value can be calculated by setting m=0.5 ⋅mss in
Equation 4, and solving for t.
Figure 1. PWR primary system mass flow rate during cold
zero-power start-up.

iii) Equation 5 indicates that the time constant is proportional to

the loop length and inversely proportional to the square root of the
pump head. Thus, it can be concluded that the time constant for the
scaled-down loop will be lower than for the actual PWR primary
system by a factor of √10≈3.16.

Problem 2 (25%) – Surface tension effects in borated water

draining from a BWR Standby Liquid Control Tank.
 i) The water pressure at the bottom of the tank, Pℓ, can be
calculated as follows:

where Patm is the atmospheric pressure, ρℓ is the borated water

density and L is the level in the tank. Let us now focus on the
liquid/air interface at the hole. For a contact angle >90°, the effect
of surface tension is to oppose draining. The condition for static
equilibrium (i.e., no draining) is:

where σ is the surface tension and r is the radius of curvature,

which can be derived from simple geometric considerations:

with dH=0.5 mm. Combining Equations 7 and 8, one gets the

maximum level of borated water that can be held up by the
surface tension in the hole, Lmax:

Since the initial level is higher than Lmax, the borated water will
drain until L=Lmax.
ii) If the contact angle is <90°, the tank will drain completely
because surface tension no longer opposes draining.

iii) If the tank top is sealed and there is a cover gas, the borated
water will drain until the cover gas pressure, Pcg, becomes
sufficiently low. The condition for static equilibrium is:

where the positive sign on the right-hand side applies to contact

angles >90° and the negative sign to contact angles <90°. Thus,
the contact angle will affect the equilibrium pressure of the cover
gas, but at a certain point draining will stop regardless of the
value of the contact angle.

Problem 3 (25%) – Flow split between a heated and an

adiabatic channel.
i) The mass equation for the system is:

where m1 and m2 are the mass flow rate in channels 1 and 2,

respectively. The energy equations are:
where T1L and T2L are the temperature at the outlet of channels
1 and 2, respectively. The momentum equations are:

where Po is the inlet plenum pressure. Equations 12 through 16

are 5 equations in the 5 unknowns m& 1 , m& 2 , T1L, T2L
and Po. Substituting Equation 13 into Equation 15, eliminating
Po from Equations 15 and 16, and solving for , one gets:
iii) If the heat rate in channel 1 is increased beyond , the flow in
channel 2 actually reverses. Explanation: in this system the column
weight in channel 2 sets the pressure drop for both channels (see
Equation 16). Focus now on channel 1. Because of the heating, the
column weight in channel 1 is lower than the total pressure drop
(Equation 15). So in general, channel 1 will have higher flow rate
than channel 2. When the heating is so high that the flow rate in
channel 1 is higher than the total flow rate m Qo & tot, the flow in
channel 2 has to reverse to satisfy continuity (Equation 12).

Problem 4 (20%) – Quenching experiments to simulate boiling

heat transfer during a LBLOCA.

i) The main differences are geometry (spherical vs. cylindrical)

and materials (copper vs. zirconium). Geometry differences will
have an effect mostly on film boiling and DNB. Materials
differences will have an effect mostly on nucleate boiling.
Because of geometry, size and materials differences, the
experiment and reactor situation will also have different thermal
capacities, and thus different time scales.
ii) The energy balance for the sphere is:
where ρ and Cp are the copper density and specific heat,
respectively, T, V and S are the sphere temperature, volume and
surface, respectively, q" is the heat flux at the surface, h is the heat
transfer coefficient, and Tsat is the saturation temperature of water.

iii) The qualitative sketch of the sphere temperature history for an

initial temperature of 1,500°C is shown in Figure 2. The sphere
goes through all heat transfer regimes, including transition boiling,
because the situation is temperature controlled, not heat-flux
controlled. Note that the film boiling region has the longest
duration because of its large temperature width. The concavity of
the T-t curve can be determined by differentiating Equation 19:

Since the term is obviously positive, the concavity depends

only on the
derivative of the heat flux with respect to temperature. Thus, the
concavity is positive for film boiling, nucleate boiling and
natural convection, but is negative for transition boiling.